Batman: Monster
by iammemyself
Summary: Evil is a choice.


Monster

By Indiana

Characters: Jonathan Crane

Synopsis: Evil is a choice.

* * *

There was once a boy with a monster beneath his bed.

The monster was cold, and dark, and he knew not its intentions; he knew only it had appeared one night when he arrived at home and it had not left.

He feared it, as he feared all things, and so he made no motions against it. He slept o'ertop of it and it slept below him, and it came to be nearly comforting, as is a nightmare one has seen so many times one knows it through from beginning to end.

The boy climbed into bed one night and his eyes were awash with tears; from its cold and ebony corner the monster asked in a gentle and cloying whisper, "Child, why do you cry?"

The boy startled and pressed his trembling back against the post, and his lips spread open but he did not speak.

"Tell me, child," the monster said, more gently and more cloying than before, "why do you cry?"

The boy was a-feared and shook his head, and his knees were drawn by clasping fingers to his thin chest. And again he did not answer.

"Fear me not," the monster said, "for I wish only to help. Tell me, child: why do you cry?"

Well, this did not change much, for none had offered to aid this boy before and so he was distrustful. But he sniffled and ran his fingers beneath his eyes and answered, "I cry because the children at school tease me."

"That is unkind," the monster said. "What have you done to deserve as such, my child?"

"I have done nothing," the boy answered. "They tease because my limbs are too thin and too long and too clumsy."

"Ah, but they are wrong to tease," the monster said to him, "for do you know what your future holds?"

"I do not," the boy answered, and he did not want to know but he was too afraid of not knowing.

"Your limbs are thin so that you may move with ease, my child. And they are long so that when you are older you may look down upon all those who belong below you. And you shall learn grace, when the time comes, ah, they will speak of your firm steps and your raised head!"

That all sounded wonderful to the boy, and he released his knees and leaned forward, and his hand trembled against the crumpled blanket. His voice was small and craven as he asked, "Can that be true?"

"It can be," the monster soothed, "if you wish it."

* * *

Every night when the boy came home, the monster rested patiently; sometimes it spoke and sometimes it did not. Upon a night when he lay crumpled beneath the blanket and his mind would not come to rest, he whispered, "Are you there?"

"I am always here," the monster soothed. "What is it, child?"

"The children tease again," the boy said, his voice timorous and hesitant, "and I can see no better future in it."

"In what, my child?" the monster asked.

"They tell me I am ugly," the boy answered, and his fingers clutched tight the blanket and his toes curled into each other. "There can be nothing good in the future about that!"

"Oh, but there is," the monster said assuredly. "You shall know their true intentions without deceit, my child. Others who are more sightly than you shall fall victim to those who care only for their looks, but you! you are luckier than you know, for idle flattery will never beguile you. Your face does not hide what you are within, as so many do, and you may know now that a pretty face serves only to hide the ugliness behind it. Beauty is a trap that shall not befall you."

The words were reassuring, and settled his spirits, and the boy closed his eyes and slept.

* * *

There came a night when he was a little older, and he sat at a desk of splinters with his stained textbook lit by a bulb muted beneath a spotted shade. The words before him held no meaning, for his mind was troubled. And as always he did at such times, he asked, "Are you there?"

"Indeed I am," the monster said. "What is it?"

"I have no one to call my friend," the boy answered. "I have no one to do projects with, or with whom to trade notes, or to laugh and talk with."

"Oh, how lucky you are!" the monster said. "For there is little use in friends, my child. A friend is only a person who sees in you what they lack in themselves, and if you were to have one it would be _you_ who was lacking. No, you need not friends, my child, for you are more than enough for yourself. What you cannot yet do you shall soon learn."

The boy folded together his hands and regarded the shadows on the wall, and he felt the truth of it. And when he looked again at the page in front of him, it promised he could continue on unaided.

* * *

When he was a little older there came an eve where he returned home dejected, and his bag thudded to the floor as he set onto his bed with his face behind his hands. And he felt the cold touch of the monster beneath him, and it asked,

"What is it, my child?"

"There was something at school I wished to attend," the boy answered. "I asked a fair lady if she would accompany me. She agreed to do so, but when we arrived I discovered it was all in deceit! for when we arrived there she abandoned me and left me to find only teasing and ridicule. I cannot go back. I cannot face any of it again."

"You can!" the monster snapped, and for the first time since he was very young the boy was a-feared of it. He drew forth his face from his hands and asked,

"How?"

"You shall do as I've told you. You shall return with your head high to look down upon them, for they are below you. You shall walk firmly and with grace, and you will do no such foolish thing again. A woman is worse than a friend could ever be, for a woman will try to mold you as her own. She will never take you as you are, and she will say you are not good enough, but know this: you need heed the words of no one. You are greater than any woman could ever cause you to be."

"But will I not be lonely, with no one to share my life with?" the boy asked.

"People try only to cause change," the monster said. "You will find you have shared too much of yourself before too long, given too much to them in return for too little, and you will know where you misstepped but you will be unable to go back."

This was an answer of which he was unsure, but he knew not how to verify. And yet he did not like the thought of fracturing himself, piece by piece, for the sake of some other. No, he would find comfort in his own company. Better that he had the advantage rather than any other.

* * *

He grew older, and needed the advice of the monster less and less, for he was coming to know the answers to any questions he may have had. Still it stayed with him when he moved into a new room in a new state, where he set upon the beginnings of his adult life. He returned to his room upon the conclusion of class and sat upon his bed, and his fingers were woven together and his eyes pensive. Finally, he ventured, "Are you there?"

"What is it, my child?" the monster asked.

"I fear I will be unable to complete my degree," the boy said, "for I cannot find a professor willing to work with me. When I show my work to them they ridicule me and call me a fool."

"Then you must _make_ them," the monster said.

"And how am I to do so?"

"Think back to your youth," the monster advised. "When someone aimed to direct your actions, what would they do?"

"They would inspire fear in me," the boy answered. "Am I to make a professor work with me out of fear?"

The monster needed not answer, for he had already risen to regard some manner of papers on his desk: his work, consisting of many countless hours of research on that emotion which had plagued his youth. All to whom he had shown this had scorned him, had waved him off and said there was no practical application with which his formulae to induce fear could be used… but it seemed there was.

* * *

The years wound on and the boy became a man, fully, and there came a night when he returned home with his spirits asunder. He set upon the chair before his desk, and he thought and he thought. Finally, he said, "Are you there?"

"What is it, my child?" the monster asked, and the man wove his fingers together and said,

"I have taken action upon some who have wronged me. I had had enough of their ridicule and their whispers and their disrespect, and as they did not seem to know the truth of me I showed it to them."

"As you should have," the monster soothed.

"I came upon something I did not expect," the man continued, and his shoulders were hunched together and his knees pressed against each other. "You see, in revealing to them the truth of me I realised it was the first time I had seen it myself."

"And what did you see?" the monster asked.

"I saw that I am more than I allow myself to be," the man answered. "You see, continuing my work will always be a struggle, a battle against those who do not understand it. I may spend my life fighting a great deal and end up with very little."

"And what will you do?"

"I will become something others are afraid to be, and I will admit a truth others are afraid to speak of themselves," the man said. "I will become the force God or nature intended me to be. I shall not hide from it anymore."

"Then go forth," the monster said, "and show yourself who you are."

And the man nodded to himself and stood.

* * *

There came an evening when the man stood in front of a pane of glass, adjusting his clothes as he put them on for the first time. The dusky reflection of his visage showed no expression, and he was glad, for he preferred when none could read his face. One could not prevent what they could not see.

He fingered the limp and roughened brim of a hat woven of straw, and as always there was that coldness that had come when he was a boy and had never left. Indeed, as the long years had gone by it had only grown, had only enveloped, had only settled, and he had come to welcome it. Sometimes it filled the emptiness he knew not otherwise how to fill.

"It has been a great many long years," the man said, and his voice was now calm and level and wise. "You are a presence I have known without fail, and yet you stand always behind me, within my shadow. I need not your advice anymore, for I know now how to care for myself, and yet I have one further question to ask of you."

"Ask you may," the monster said, "though you have become clever and I believe the answer already known to you."

"Perhaps," the man said. "But I am a man of science, and such men must hear their answers in full for theories are easily quashed."

The hat he now laid aside for a bundle of rough cloth that bristled against his skin when he touched it, and upon it he ran one questing thumb, back and forth and back and forth. It was nothing just now, but once he took it up the way he meant to, it would become his face. If not that it already was.

"Tell me," the man said. "I have taken heed of your whisper for lo these years, and know as well as your voice I do the feel of you. But I have not yet looked upon your face. Why should that be?"

"Ah, but you look upon it now," the monster purred. "I am there now, in the slant of your brow. I am in the downward curl of your mouth, and in the pointedness of your tongue, and in the cunning always present in your eye. I have been there always. You have seen me always."

The man nodded slowly, for the answer was as he had expected. The divide between them was not so great, and he had known for some time now. There came no thought to turn back; he had interest now only in moving further down the path he had chosen.

"Once you don the shroud," the monster whispered, "you shall breathe me in."

He looked down at it, and the ragged face he had torn upon it, and he knew that the monster lived there too, inside of that dark interior. And he did not mind. That was as it should be.

And it was as it should have been, too, as he pulled it down over his hair and it pressed against his face, and when he had become accustomed to the feel of it he took up the hat in one scarred hand and set off down the road.

* * *

 **Author's note**

 **This is not about Jonathan having a split personality from Scarecrow. This is about the times when we are wronged and we make the wrong choice because it feels better for now. And in the future we discover the choice was wrong and we then have to decide whether to continue on as such or to learn better. You can't fight evil with evil without being evil yourself. And when we do bad things, sometimes we blame them on others, or extenuating circumstances, but in the end one day we have to ask what the cause of those decisions really was and the only true answer is that we decided to act that way. And so the monster Jonathan was listening to was all along himself. The monster was his shadow self, the true self he let linger behind him as he pretended to be like everyone else, and when he accepts what he is he becomes his own shadow.**


End file.
